free form or a healthy variety of sound for listening pleasure
A show of regional styles and traditional music focused on indigenous Central and South America. This episode includes both field recordings and speculative commercial attempts of pre-Columbian or pre-conquest music and instruments, as well as more modern traditional styles.
A solid hour of Indonesian percussion orchestras, friend of the show Will R. does a Gamelan guest set, with some later tracks added by the show host, hear Gamelan, and other Gamelan adjacent music from Java, Bali, and some American Gamelan.
A mix of sounds from all over. Hear shepherds pipes, marimba & jawbone, panpipe ensembles, Khene, double membrane drum, Norwegian hardanger (octave) fiddle, and more.
Keep warm with a winter mix of regional styles and traditional music from all over the Caribbean. Hear chanteys, mazurka, merengue, calypso, and other regional styles, on recordings from Loulou Boilasville Orchestra, Rawlingson Hector, Everard DeJean, Nassau String Band, Ago's Bal Band, Orchestre Jazz Corondo, The Duke of Iron, and others.
Celebrate the New Year with the Vernacular Sounds 2024 NYE Bluegrass Country Gospel Bonanza. Labels such as Starday, REM, King, Audiolab, and some independent or self-released material mingles with some bigger Nashville labels. Recordings by Moore & Napier, Easter Brothers, Carl Story, Red Ellis, Wayne Raney, A.L. Phipps Family, J.D. Jarvis, Cooke Duet and others.
The 2024 Vernacular Sound Holiday Special is a mix of regional styles and traditional music from all over England, with some ceremonial and holiday material. Grab some ale or nog or whatever and hear wassailing, brass bands, and Mummers along with ballads, broadsides, and some songs of labor and industrial discontent. Recordings by the Copper Family, Harry Cox, the Watersons, Anne Briggs, Harry Boardman, Maureen Craik, Ed Pickford and more.
A mix of regional styles and traditional music from Louisiana. Hear early to mid 50’s Cajun, Creole, Zydeco, Acadian and New Orleans brass bands, are all featured recordings from Amede Ardoin, Dennis McGee, Joseph Falcon & Cleoma Breaux, S.D. Courville, Dewey Balfa and his family, Nathan Abshire, Hackberry Ramblers, Elise Doshotel & His Lousiana Rhythmnaires (featuring steel guitar wizard Atlas Fruge), Eureka Brass Band, and others.
A show of regional styles and traditional music from Kentucky, the Bluegrass state, ballads, banjo, fiddle, hard shell Baptist sacred singing, old time, and, surprise, bluegrass are all featured on recordings by Roscoe Holcomb, Bill Corbett, Daw Henson, Rufus Crisp, Lenville Ball, Clyde Davenport & W.L. Gregory, Edna Ritchie, George Roark, Bill Shepard, and others.
A mix of regional styles and traditional music from all over the Mediterranean. Hear Italian and Greek bagpipes, Periklis Halkias (Epirus), beautiful Tralaleri polyphony, Sicilian folk song and Cantastorie (poet-story-singing), and even an ancient Greek fragment from 130 C.E. Recordists include Wolf Dietrich, Walter Henna, Diego Capitella, Alan Lomax, and others. Music from Crete, Kos, Karpathos, Epirus, Sicily Calabria, Sardinia, Corsica, Mallorca, Genoa, and more!
A show of regional styles and traditional music from the Ozarks. Hear tracks from the recording work of Vance Randolph, Mary Celestia Parler, Alan Lomax, and Shirley Collins. Ballads, mouth harp, banjo, fiddle, sacred songs, bluegrass, old time, and a few hog themed songs are all featured on tracks by Almeda Riddle, Neil Morris, Max Hunter, Jimmy Denoon, Hiter Colvin, Weems String Band, Dub Crouch, and others.
